UAW President Fraser Supports Party Reform

Douglas Fraser, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), told 150 people at teh Kennedy School ARCO Forum last night that although he has no "philosophical hangups" about labor forming a third party in America, social activists should try to reform the Democratic Party first.

"At this point in time a third party is not viable. We have to start thinking the way the right wing is thinking," he said. "The right wing is advancing proposals like Kemp-Roth--it may be economic nonsense, but its an idea, and that is more than they used to have."

Easy Street

Sponsored by an Institute of Politics study group, Fraser said he thinks the 1.5 million UAW workers can look forward to a four-day work week. The current UAW contract expires next year.

"We made a mistake because we thought we won the election in 1976, but we didn't and that was due to the inability of our government to come to grips with the problems of our people," he said.

"Really you would be better off if those democrats who got elected in the backwash of Watergate were not; then American politics would have some clarity, not politics of personality but politics of principle," Fraser added.

Fraser said free trade in the auto industry did not worry him. "American Auto companies have refused to compete in that market (for small cars). I refuse to believe the German and Japanese workers can produce a better car than we can."

"There is a great disparity between wage rates of the haves and the have-nots--you don't have anywhere in the world wages of one group double that of another," he said, adding, "It toubles me that wage and price guidelines may accentuate this disparity."

Fraser said he thought the labor movement belonged in the "vanguard" of society. He alluded to a Harris poll in which "labor finished just above the used car salsesman," in terms of public trust.

"The government should be the employer of last resort. Any humane and progressive government should offer every man and woman willing to work a job. I could give you a laundry list of jobs that could be done that are not," he said.

Former President Gerald R. Ford appointed Fraser to a presidential labor-management council in 1975. Fraser said one reason he resigned this summer was that the committee, which included the chairmen of major corporations, "knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing," in reference to their opposition to occupational safety and health standards.

When asked if he thought labor should educate its ranks in institutions such as Harvard Business School, Fraser commented, "I'd rather send them to labor school.